Metastable and equilibrium defect structure of II–VI/GaAs interfaces

Abstract

Defect characterization by high-resolution electron microscopy is presented for (001) epitaxy of the CdTe/GaAs and ZnTe/GaAs heterojunctions, before and after a long vacuum anneal. The annealed interface structure consists of a periodic array of perfect edge Lomer misfit dislocations, with spacing corresponding to a strain-free thin film. Since this is the most efficient manner to obtain complete relaxation, it represents the equilibrium microstructure. The as-deposited films are very thick, three to four orders of magnitude greater than the critical thicknesses, which are both less than a monolayer for these large lattice mismatch systems. Their microstructure corresponds to a metastable distribution of defects in that the thin film residual strain is nearly zero and neighboring defects can react to form Lomer misfits. A variety of defects exist both in the form of perfect misfit dislocations at the interface and extended defects into the thin film. The extended defects result from formation of stacking faults bounded by either Shockley or Frank partials, and more complicated defect structures due to interacting perfect and partial dislocations on intersecting slip planes. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the means by which complete stress relaxation can occur through dislocation reactions during annealing of very thick as-deposited films.